Exploring interactive communication using social ...

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Exploring interactive communication using social media a

b

Chrystal B. Zhang & Yi Hsin Lin a

Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, Melbourne 3122, Australia b

Department of Leisure & Recreation Management, Asia University, No. 500, Lioufeng Rd, Wufeng, Taichung City 41354, Taiwan Published online: 24 Jul 2015.

Click for updates To cite this article: Chrystal B. Zhang & Yi Hsin Lin (2015) Exploring interactive communication using social media, The Service Industries Journal, 35:11-12, 670-693, DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2015.1064396 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2015.1064396

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The Service Industries Journal, 2015 Vol. 35, Nos. 11–12, 670–693, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2015.1064396

Exploring interactive communication using social media Chrystal B. Zhanga and Yi Hsin Linb* a

Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, Melbourne 3122, Australia; bDepartment of Leisure & Recreation Management, Asia University, No. 500, Lioufeng Rd, Wufeng, Taichung City 41354, Taiwan

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(Received 26 March 2014; accepted 17 June 2015) Engaging consumers in interactive marketing communication is instrumental in business–customer relationships building and development. Social media enables consumers to initiate marketing messages and gain growing control in the communication process due to its enhanced interactivity features. This study investigates whether communication between businesses and their social media users is interactive and how interactive it is. It also attempts to determine what types of messages are more likely to result in interactive communication. The findings reveal that businesses are attempting functional interactivity while individual users are increasingly securing a control to achieve contingent interactivity. Businesses are adopting a consumer-centric approach in designing and executing marketing communication messages to achieve interactivity though significant variance is established between businesses as measured by Interactivity Performance Matrix. Challenges remain for businesses as to how to engage their customers by utilizing the interactivity features of social media to facilitate relationships formulation and development. Keywords: relationship marketing; communication; interactivity; consumer-centric approach; social media

Introduction Marketing communication has experienced a paradigm shift over the last two decades from integrated marketing communication focusing on businesses that drive the integration and conveyance of a consistent message to consumers to relationship communication which advocates a consumer-centric approach (Finne & Gronroos, 2009; Vlasic & Kesic, 2007). While businesses are only able to create the circumstances, through a comprehensive planning, for their marketing communication message to be conveyed (Finne & Gronroos, 2009), it is consumers who hold the key to enabling the integration of such communication, hence making the communication relational resulting in relationship formulation and development. Non-interactive marketing communication, without the involvement and participation of consumers, is set to evolve into interactive communication with a more conversational style of two-way dialogue between businesses and consumers (Deighton & Grayson, 1995). Technology advancement, such as the World Wide Web, has enabled consumers to take part in the marketing communication process, resulting in interactive conversational

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] © 2015 Taylor & Francis

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communication (Pantelidis, 2010; Schmallegger & Carson, 2008). It has opened up a new door for businesses to engage with their customers in new and meaningful ways (Durkin, Filbey, & McCartan-Quinn, 2014) and to maintain an instant and constant dialogue at lower cost, thus facilitating the achievement of relationship communication between businesses and consumers. The latest development of such technology advancement is social media. Social media is defined as a group of Internet-based applications (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010) and comprises both the conduits that can carry the content and the content itself that can be presented in various formats (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger, & Shapiro, 2012). Regardless of being a business or a consumer, social media allows every user to enjoy the equal opportunity to create, contribute and disseminate messages (Li & Wang, 2011; Thevenot, 2007). Such user-created content has unprecedentedly enriched communication, both in its content and in format. In comparison to static websites, social media has enabled real-time conversations between all users without time or physical constraints. This promises an increased online interactive communication, allows a relationship to be developed and sustained (Etter & Fieseler, 2010), generates sales and revenue (Kunz & Hackworth, 2011), and aids in strengthening customer loyalty and improving the overall satisfaction (Kasavana, Nusair, & Teodosic, 2010). Envisaging the greatest potential, businesses are quick to capitalize on the properties of social media by exploiting its prospective multifaceted functions. For instance, some businesses have utilized social media as an advertising medium to promote products and services to a wider customer base (Hansson, Wrangmo, & Søilen, 2013). Others have attempted to use social media as a communication channel to provide customer support, keep their customers updated about their products and services and publish news releases, thus staying connected with their customers to create and strengthen the bond between them (Mitic & Kapoulas, 2012). While social media has presented enormous opportunities for businesses in a dynamic way, it also posits unprecedented challenges. One of the key concerns of businesses is that they are deprived of the privilege to control the communication process with their welldesigned public relation messages, as social media bestows the once passive customers the equal power to participate in and contribute to the communication. Another concern is the effect of ‘viral marketing’ or ‘social media marketing’ (Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010), as used interchangeably, that allows a message to be transmitted to a large group of people instantly (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011), which could be either instrumental or detrimental to a business brand. Furthermore, businesses have not fully understood what constitutes the multifaceted concept of interactivity in the virtual environment (Johnson, Bruner, & Kumar, 2006) and the shortage of resources to manage the online activities has hindered any strategies to be formulated and any proactive actions to be taken effectively. The lack of interaction between businesses and their customers on social media could affect the ultimate success of corporate strategies and the business competitive edge (Chan & Denizci Guillet, 2011). To date, a burgeoning mountain of literature on social media has emerged, examining how businesses have exploited its wide array of functions. However, there is a gap in the available literature relative to the efficacy of using social media as a communication mechanism to facilitate interactive relationship communication between businesses and their customers. Specifically, the majority of social media literature to date still takes a business-centric approach (sender) based on an inside-out view by concentrating their analyses on business’ strategies and actions of employing social media in their marketing

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activities. Businesses are still considered to control the craft of marketing communication while consumers are treated as passive recipients, though creative and influential. While there is some scholarship examining consumers’ behaviour on social media, the focus is on their motives, personality traits and utilization patterns in using social media. A handful of studies have attempted to investigate the contribution of consumers to social media communication, but the findings are more or less empirical evidence of the types of messages that are created and shared on social media and its impact on the corporate brand. An outside-in approach focusing on consumers is yet to be adopted, and consumers’ role in marketing communication has not been fully recognized to the same extent as that of the businesses (Finne & Gronroos, 2009). As a consequence, few studies are able to investigate one step further to establish whether it is both businesses and consumers who equally contribute to the marketing communication on social media resulting in interactive communication, how interactive such communication is, and whether such interactive communication contributes to business–customer relationships building and development. The lack of any informative and conclusive results in this aspect is likely to be due to the following. Firstly, there is an ongoing debate as to how to define the interactive communication between businesses and their customers in an online environment. Researchers have thus to determine and interpret the term in the context of the subject matter in question, resulting in a diversity of definitions which cannot be universally accepted (BlascoArcas, Hernandez-Ortega, & Jimenez-Martinez, 2014). Next, there is a variance of measurement when determining the interactive communication between businesses and their customers. Some propose the perceived technology-enabled people–machine interactivity while others contest to examine interactivity between users by treating technology as an enabler. In addition, the role of interactive communication in customer relationship development and management remains an intriguing interdisciplinary area stretching across communication and marketing, which therefore requires more empirical research in order to validate propositions and facilitate theory building and development. While it is not disputed that interactive communication plays a pivotal role in developing and maintaining business–customer relationships, a consumer-centric approach to marketing communication should be advocated to ensure that consumers create the same meaning as intended by the businesses to enable the successful integration of marketing messages (Finne & Gronroos, 2009) and relationships formulation. Technology advancement has offered customers powerful avenues through which to participate and play an active role in marketing communication in online environment (Blasco-Arcas et al., 2014). There is a compelling need to examine the marketing communication from both businesses and customers’ perspectives, who are cooperating as well as competing in contributing to the interactive communication. This study therefore proposes to investigate the communication on social media without discriminating consumers’ contribution. We aim to establish whether both businesses and their customers contribute to marketing communication on social media and further determine whether, and to what extent, such communication is interactive and conducive to relationship building and development. We use the Facebook postings collected from 20 airlines in five regions as the object of the study. Specifically, we attempt to answer the following research questions (RQs). RQ1. What types of messages are generated by, and exchanged between, businesses and their customers on Facebook? RQ2. Are the messages interactive? RQ3. How interactive is the communication? RQ4. What types of messages are more likely to result in interactive communication leading to relationships formulation and development?

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Relationship marketing, interactive communication and social media Marketing has become more and more communication dependent in that communication has become the primary integrative element in managing a business–customer relationship (Duncan & Moriarty, 1998; Kelleher, 2009; Ledingham, 2003). Relationship marketing embraces a collection of all marketing activities directed towards establishing, developing and maintaining successful relational exchanges (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Yoon, Choi, & Sohn, 2008). As a theoretical concept and industry practice, it has thus gained its threshold over the last two decades and has since received close attention due to its importance of maintaining and enhancing existing and prospective business– customer relationships (Duncan & Moriarty, 1998). Two-way communication and interactivity is instrumental in this relationship-building process. It has demonstrated capability of engaging both businesses and their customers, enabling customers to create shared meaning of marketing messages as intended by businesses, and allowing the ‘new generation’ of derivative marketing approaches, such as customer-focused, market-driven, outside-in, data-driven marketing, integrated marketing and integrated marketing communications, to emerge and develop (Cross & Smith, 1995; Duncan & Moriarty, 1998). Marketing communication becomes interactive when all parties concerned are engaged with each other through participating in all types of activities that would convert the marketing communication messages and create meaning in a mutually beneficial way that affects the knowledge base between the parties (Lindberg-Repo, 2001). An interactive communication is found to be positively associated with the perceived relationship investment of the businesses in terms of their efforts, resources and attention aimed at maintaining or enhancing relationships with the customers (Yoon et al., 2008). Interactive communication can occur both in technologically mediated (e.g. the Internet) and unmediated (e.g. faceto-face) contexts. Media, whose communication forms come closest to face-to-face, are traditionally considered the most interactive. Heeter (1989) asserts that the more the technologically mediated communication resembles interpersonal communication, the more interactive the communication is. However, Gulbrandsen and Just (2011) argue that technology does not automatically generate interactive communication. Rather it is the ability and willingness of the users to participate and contribute that enables an interactive communication. Although various interactive features are equally available on a website, consumers tend to take advantage of those features in different ways and their practices of using the features do change in relation to contextual matters (Boczkowski & Mitchelstein, 2012). Businesses, therefore, need to pay attention to the media features, users’ practices and their interdependences in order to achieve interactivity and improve its outcome (Boczkowski & Mitchelstein, 2012). Sundar, Kalyanaraman, and Brown (2003) suggest two types of technology-mediated interactivity: functional interactivity and contingency interactivity. A functional interactivity is basically an interface’s capacity of conducting a dialogue or information exchange between users and the interface. Features such as the presence of an e-mail link, chat room, event calendar, search function, and functions hosting surveys, polls and any other format inviting users to send responses to the web-hosting organization are said to be essential in facilitating a dialogue loop, which in turn encourages visitors to action when visiting or returning to the web, thus resulting in interactivity. A contingency interactivity, however, is a process involving users, media and messages in which communication roles are interchangeable for full interactivity to occur. Contingency means that messages in an interactive process of communication are contingent upon previous messages. The more a user’s

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response to another and the more intertwined and cumulative, the more interactive the communication is (Rafaeli, 1988; Walther, Gay, & Hancock, 2005). Social media is the latest development of Internet-facilitated communication platform that has the potential to enhance interactive communication to a higher level. In the traditional, offline environment, marketing communication is initiated by businesses and relationships between businesses and their customers are manoeuvred through various promotional efforts such as advertising, direct mail and sales promotions (Yoon et al., 2008). The Internet, however, empowers the consumers with the initiative to establish and retain relationships with businesses by proactively engaging in two-way, self-driven communication and exercising an independent control over the communication process (BezjianAvery, Calder, & Iacobucci, 1998; Yoon et al., 2008). Both businesses and consumers have control and may in turn act as senders and receivers (Fred Van Raaij, 1998). Social media has extended the capacity of the Internet by enabling instant and constant, unique and personalized conversations between businesses and their customers, thus making the interactive communication more achievable and effective. Kelleher (2009) asserts that interactive and participatory features of social media facilitate businesses to realize the potential of the Internet to achieve relational outcomes, which include trust, satisfaction, community and control mutuality. While few will question the interactive feature of social media, especially its promising role of enhancing interactive communication to a higher level, little is known of whether businesses and their customers have explored this interactivity feature and how they are engaging with each other resulting in interactive communication. Swain (2005) points out that industry practitioners and academics alike are, to some extent, sceptical of the dominance of interactivity in marketing communication though they anticipate that its importance will grow and it will take some time for such activities to be extensively adopted and incorporated into practitioners’ daily responsibilities. Burton and Soboleva (2011) have established that some companies have just started to engage with customers in an interactive communication, though there is a large variance observed across the industries. They note that businesses tend to struggle when handling conversations and responses to their customers due to their unclear social media strategies, lack of internal coordination, and short of resources and skills required (Burton & Soboleva, 2011). Etter (2013) discovers that businesses are hesitant to engage into an interaction with their customers on Twitter when the topic is more sensitive, is a contested area or has a major impact on its reputation and legitimacy. They therefore tend to adopt a cautious approach to interactive communication to mitigate any possible criticism or risks of attracting critical stakeholders that would openly question its legitimacy (Etter, 2013). Baird and Parasnis (2011) argue that there exists a misperception in the business community about users’ willingness to communicate and connect with brands on Facebook. The majority of consumers treat Facebook as a vehicle for personal connections with friends and families rather than engaging with businesses (Baird & Parasnis, 2011). They are less interested in the organizations on Facebook, nor are they enthusiastic about communicating with organizations (Vorvoreanu, 2009). While consumers’ key motives in choosing to use Facebook are entertainment, passing time, self-expression, information seeking and gaining self-satisfaction (Hunt, Atkin, & Krishnan, 2012; Leung & Bai, 2013; Zywica & Danowski, 2008), their capacity of using social media is dictated by their personality traits, gender differences and interpersonal competency (Hunt et al., 2012; Jenkins-Guarnieri, Wright, & Hudiburgh, 2012). Swain (2005) argues that it is reasonable to speculate that the consumer-initiated, controlled and maintained interactive communication with businesses will escalate eventually

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(Swain, 2005) as consumers have demonstrated a positive attitude towards interactive marketing communication (Vlasic & Kesic, 2007). Consumers perceive more added value to themselves in a more personalized interactive communication but more value to businesses in an automated interactive communication. The challenge is whether the consumers perceive any added value to compensate for the possible costs incurred, as well as for the extra efforts invested in mastering and using the interactive technologies. Consumers are only prepared to accept any new types of communications with businesses if they see any adequate added value (Vlasic & Kesic, 2007). When using social media to convey marketing messages, businesses are found to treat social media in a more conventional marketing approach. One such example is that the language used for social media advertisements and sales promotions is very one-way static statements, with the overall tone leaning toward formal, official and authoritative (Hvass & Munar, 2012). The information is ‘broadcasted’ rather than conversed (Carim & Warwick, 2013), with customers being less inspired to participate. Such an authoritative tone adopted by businesses demonstrates that a command-and-control attitude towards social media is still prevailing, which would limit the interactivity between posters, hence hindering relationships building and development (Shih, 2009). Merchant, Elmer, and Lurie (2011) argue that social media is more than just another mass or interpersonal communication channel such as print, television or radio. Rather, it is the polar opposite of traditional marketing media. While the added value of social media is its capacity to enable participatory and interactive communication, businesses need to reconsider how to develop and disseminate their marketing messages on social media. Schmallegger and Carson (2008) rightly suggest that business-created content on social media should not be promotion-oriented. Instead, it ought to provide some added value to customers (Akehurst, 2009; Schmallegger & Carson, 2008) so as to be more inviting and engaging. Methodology Social media site selection Of all the social media sites, Facebook is the most popular and takes the biggest market share. It embraces the interactivity of the Internet by allowing users to utilize various features designed for interpersonal communication (Hunt et al., 2012) appealing to both businesses and individual users. Specifically, it acts as an interface allowing businesses to post any messages attracting users to visit the site and take further action by clicking, emailing, sharing and commenting, thus achieving a functional interactivity. It also serves as a contingency interactivity platform to enable two-way communication that can develop into a thread of discussion between businesses and their users, and between users themselves. Airlines selection Two full service carriers (FSCs) and two low cost carriers (LCCs) were chosen from five regions, bringing the total sample to 20. In determining which FSC and LCC to select, two criteria applied. The first was the winner of the top Skytrax World Airline Awards 2011 of the category for the region, and the second was the number of ‘likes’ the airline’s Facebook page has received from their Facebook users. The commodity they share is that they are the most liked carriers by passengers who express their views in different ways. The Skytrax Airline Award is voted by travellers from over 160 countries in airline

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passenger satisfaction surveys and considered the most prestigious global benchmark for excellence of service. The Facebook ‘likes’ is uniquely designed to allow individual users to express their appreciation or a positive view on the company’s products and services without necessitating a written comment. The more ‘likes’ a company receives on its Facebook page, the more positive the company’s image is perceived though not necessarily a reflection of the best products and services provided. Table 1 is the list of airlines selected for this study.

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Posts collection Posts were collected between 16th and 23rd August 2012, from the English version of the Facebook page of the above 20 airlines. For example, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ (KLM) posts were collected from the English version of its Facebook page in the Netherlands rather than the Dutch version. The timing chosen is believed to be appropriate in that it was a typical operational week without reported accidents, incidents or crises on public domains. The posts were not closely related to any specific issues or crises that were pertinent to any particular airline, hence were an authentic collection of the messages authored by both airlines and their Facebook users.

Coding and categorizing themes of postings We first grouped all posts into two broad categories: airline-authored content and individual user-authored content. We then divided airline-authored content into two subgroups: airline-initiated and airline-responded posts. Airline-initiated posts are messages initiated by airlines, which contain the information that airlines want to communicate to their Facebook users. Airline-responded posts are messages responded by airlines to their users, though airlines retained authorship of such messages. We then analyzed each group of posts in an attempt to uncover a theme pertinent to the messages. Initially, the themes developed by Sreenivasan, Lee, and Goh (2012) were applied to our collection, with reference being made to readings in marketing literature as well as definitions and scope adopted by Hvass and Munar (2012). However, the groupings were modified for a more accurate and appropriate reflection of the messages. Headings bearing identical themes were integrated into one category, and new entries were added to represent novel themes. It is believed that such regroupings are both essential Table 1. List of 20 airlines selected for the study.

Criteria

Airlines

Skytrax Award 2011 FSCs winner of the region

Facebook likes

Europe

LCCs

Swiss International Air Lines easyJet

FSCs

KLM

LCCs

Ryanair

Oceania

North America

Africa

Asia/Middle East

Air New Zealand

Air Canada

South Africa Airways

Qatar Airways

Jetstar Airways Qantas Airways Tigerair Australia

Virgin America United Airlines Southwest Airlines

Kulula Airlines* EGYPTAIR

AirAsia Jet Airways

Mango Airlines*

Tigerair Singapore

*Refers to the airlines that were chosen based on Facebook likes alone as there is no award available in the region.

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and appropriate since both deductive and inductive methods were employed to ensure the fine-tuned development and accurate reflection of all themes, which in turn warrants an objective, consistent and systematic analysis of the content. A modified list of seven categories of themes was eventually suggested for both airline-initiated and user-authored posts. Table 2 is a detailed description of the categories of the themes of the posts and their definitions. Coding was conducted by a group of five undergraduate students at Swinburne University of Technology with the guidance and support of the first author of this paper. Where disagreement arose, the team discussed and referred to the definitions for an agreement. Determining whether the communication is interactive or non-interactive In determining whether the communication is interactive or non-interactive, we applied the definitions and methods discussed in the literature review, whereby interactivity includes both functional and contingent interactive communication. When a post was a poll, a quiz, a contest or a call for participation in a vote, it was classified as functional interactivity. When a post led to a thread of discussion and message exchanges between airlines and their users, it was classified as contingent interactivity. If a post did not bear any of the above features, it was treated as non-interactive communication. Table 2. Categories of airline-initiated and user-authored posts and their respective definition. Airline-initiated post Category Advertising, sales and promotion Information provision Sponsorship

Real-time updates

Social activity

Poll/contest

Miscellaneous

Definition

User-authored post Category

Promotion of airlines Compliment products or services, with or without a link to purchase Response to users’ queries Grievance and questions, provision of clarifications Information about an Sharing travel airline-sponsored event experience or initiative Timely updates on airlines’ products, services, facilities and other information that is relevant to the users’ travel and trips Initiating a dialogue without specific information about the company Invitation to users to participate a quiz or bid for a prize by answering a test Posts that do not fall into any of the above categories

Information seeking

Definition Acknowledgement and appreciation of airlines service Negative feedback, complaints about airlines product and services Sharing user’s experience with stories or photographs, without feedback received from community Raising a query and expecting an response and clarification

Community support

Sharing information and/or answering queries raised within the user community

Social activity

Personal updates, airline–users interactions and users community interaction

Miscellaneous

Posts that do not fall into any of the above categories

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To measure the performance of interactive communication of the sampled airlines, we developed an Interactivity Performance Matrix. The vertical axis refers to the number of airline-authored interactive messages while the horizontal axis represents the number of user-authored messages. We name the quadrants as Leader at the upper right, User-activist at the lower right, Business-activist at the upper left and Laggard at the lower left. Leader is a carrier that is interactively communicating (both functional and contingent) with its users, and its users are also enthusiastically and willingly posting on the carrier’s Facebook page. User-activist is an airline whose users are more active in contributing to the page but the carrier is less responding. Business-activist is a carrier that is more willing to engage with its users but, unfortunately, its users are not motivated or less interested in being involved. Laggard is the one which neither the business itself nor its users are active in engaging with each other on Facebook. Results During the data collection period, airlines authored 1875 posts in comparison to users’ 2990 posts. Table 3 is a breakdown of the posts created by both airlines and their respective users. Among all the airlines, KLM authored more than one-third (35.9%) of the posts followed by Jetstar Airways (11.5%). Ryanair was the least active airline generating zero posts while Tigerair Singapore was the second least active carrier contributing a meagre 0.9% of posts. From the users’ perspective, KLM’s users contributed the most, almost a quarter (19.6%) of posts, followed by Southwest Airlines (15.7%). Three airlines, Jet Airways, Qatar Airways and Tigerair Singapore, had no user-created posts recorded. Table 3. Breakdown of airline-authored and user-authored posts. Airline-authored Airlines KLM Swiss International Air Lines United Airlines Air Canada South Africa Airways EGYPTAIR Jet Airways Qatar Airways Qantas Airways Air New Zealand Ryanair easyJet Virgin America Southwest Airlines Kulula Airlines Mango Airlines Tigerair Singapore AirAsia Jetstar Airways Tigerair Australia Total

Airlineinitiated

Airlineresponded

Total

Percentage

Userauthored

Percentage

9 11

663 27

672 38

35.9 2.0

587 46

19.6 1.5

2 4 4 31 13 12 8 10 0 2 8 16 3 17 3 11 3 5 172

27 187 4 94 8 2 77 16 0 80 46 32 68 65 0 83 212 12 1703

29 191 8 125 21 14 85 26 0 82 54 48 71 82 3 94 215 17 1875

1.6 10.2 0.4 6.7 1.1 0.8 4.5 1.4 0.0 4.4 2.9 2.6 3.8 4.4 0.2 5.0 11.5 0.9 100.0

323 203 106 55 0 0 196 72 66 142 57 469 59 46 0 219 308 36 2990

10.8 6.8 3.6 1.8 0.0 0.0 6.6 2.4 2.2 4.8 1.9 15.7 2.0 1.5 0.0 7.3 10.3 1.2 100.0

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Categories of themes of airline-initiated messages Of the 1875 airline-authored posts, 172 were airline-initiated posts and 1703 were airlineresponded posts. FSCs contributed 60% of airline-initiated posts with the other 40% coming from the LCCs. Figure 1 is the comparison of categories of themes of posts initiated by FSCs and LCCs. Of these 172 posts, 45.3% fell into the category of ‘Advertising, and sales and promotion’, for example, statements created by airlines announcing sales and promotions of their existing destinations. LCCs were more active in advertising its services on Facebook, with around 57.4% of all of its posts contributing to this category. This finding echoes the observation made by other researchers such as Kunz and Hackworth (2011) and Hays, Page, and Buhalis (2013) that advertising is the key activity undertaken by businesses on social media. Some messages included a hyperlink that could take Facebook users directly to a flight booking page by a simple click. For example, United Airlines posted ‘People wear “1 < 3 NY” shirts for a reason. What is yours? Experience summer in the Big Apple with our New York fare. http://bit.ly/O9m6tN’. Others specified conditions for taking advantage of the special promotions without a hyperlink. For example, Tigerair promoted its routes between Singapore and Thailand for $47.00. ‘Strip member’s exclusive access: 6 August, 8am to 2pm. Public access: 6 August, 2.01pm to 8 August, 11.59pm, conditions apply’. This finding, though contradictory to what Hvass and Munar (2012) noted, demonstrates that airlines are making efforts to explore the distribution function of social media. Such a move bears strategic significance as distribution remains one of the biggest cost sources for airlines. Should social media have the potential and capacity to improve efficiency resulting in cost reductions, any efforts are worthwhile. ‘Social activity’ was the second largest category accounting for 27.9%, with FSCs demonstrating far more enthusiasm for this category. These posts, though not necessarily directly related to the provision of air services, aimed at promoting goodwill and publicity. The content ranged from acknowledging local cultural holidays to celebrating sports events, such as the 2012 London Olympics. Exemplars include Qantas Airways that posted an album of 21 photos featuring Australia’s Olympic athletes boarding its flights back home and South African Airways who boasted of their pride in flying their Olympians to London and back home. ‘Poll/contest’ ranked third, taking 9.9% of the total airline-initiated

Figure 1. Comparison of categories of themes of posts initiated by FSCs and LCCs.

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posts. This was an emerging theme which has been rarely documented in the existing literature. Sreenivasan et al. (2012) noted that about 8.5% of the tweets were polls and contests but they failed to give further discussion in their analyses. An airline’s quiz on Facebook tended to relate to its product, aircraft used or destinations served. An incentive, such as a prize, was offered to motivate participation. The most appropriate answer to the quiz was given the following day. The fourth category was ‘Sponsorship’ (7.6%) followed by ‘Miscellaneous’ (6.4%) and ‘Information provision’ (1.7%). The least active category was ‘Real-time updates’, which only took 1.2%, all contributed by FSCs. Despite this observation being inconsistent with the findings of Hvass and Munar (2012) that social media was used to disseminate time-sensitive information, it did not lead the researchers of this study to jump to the conclusion that airlines were not using social media to update their passengers about their services. A follow-up monitoring of KLM’s and Southwest Airlines’ respective Facebook pages revealed that both carriers did keep their passengers updated of their flight changes in the event of special circumstances. KLM informed its passengers of a system interruption that would prevent them from logging on to its website for online check-in and other services. Southwest Airlines advised its passengers of the prospective disruption to its services resulting from Hurricane Isaac which severely hit the southern part of the USA. The fact that few updates were collected from the sampled airlines in this study could be argued that during the data collection period, these airlines operated normally and routinely without irregular delays or interruptions, or with no introduction of any new procedures and policies. Hence, no update was required. Categories of themes of messages authored by users During the data collection period, users generously contributed 2990 posts. As shown in Figure 2, ‘Information seeking’ was the most popular category gaining 32.2% of all posts. Users have raised a wide array of queries which were either generic or specific. Generic queries sought general advice with the possibility of such advice given by both peer users and the airline concerned. For example, a user requested advice as to how to upsize their baggage limit. Another user asked for information on prospective sales and cheap fares from an airline. Specific queries usually related to a specific case, which necessitated a reply from the carrier in question. When asking specific queries, users

Figure 2. Comparison of categories of themes of posts authored by full service carrier users and low cost carrier users.

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were quite assertive requesting the airline concerned to attend, address and update them of the progress of the outstanding case. For example, one user posted a query with a specific booking reference U92PUJ, asking AirAsia to provide an update as to how the case had been addressed. This finding echoes researchers such as Jansen, Zhang, Sobel, and Chowdury (2009) and Xiang and Gretzel (2010) who identified that social media is mainly used for information seeking. ‘Grievance’ was the second largest category of user-created posts accounting for 28.6%, while ‘Compliment’ ranked fourth, responsible for 12.3%. This finding contested Sreenivasan et al. (2012) who observed that users mainly used microblogs to render compliments rather than grievances. Although Facebook is a social networking site rather than a microblog and the data collection time is different, one thing was certain: users found social media sites the most convenient and effective platform to express themselves (Goh & Lee, 2011; Lerner, Han, & Keltner, 2007). Of the 20 airlines monitored, 17 received more grievances than compliments, except KLM, Swiss International Air Lines and Southwest Airlines. Some grievances were a lengthy and detailed description of an awful personal travel experience. For example, one female user travelling with her daughter and granddaughter described how United Airlines failed to seat them together. Others could be negative comments, complaints or personal views on an airline’s conduct as a response to other users’ grievances. Such messages usually included a hyperlink to another story or description uploaded by other users. One such example was a story concerning United Airlines, which failed to look after an unaccompanied minor who did not arrive at the intended destination. This type of post is the most likely to become viral. Before social media was available, grievances and compliments from passengers were only heard when a survey was conducted or when users took the initiative to contact airlines via email or telephone. Often, the email account was generic, with no specific staff to address and the telephone number was most of the time engaged or there was no answer. Passengers become frustrated and discouraged in this process, patiently waiting for days before any response or even receiving no response from the airline. Social media, however, has taken this stress off the passengers by allowing an instant reach to airlines. In addition, passengers’ views can be spread to a wider audience in the online community without being noted by airlines. Such communication could be invisible for business and has the power to affect the brand and passengers’ buying behaviour (Finne & Strandvik, 2012; Mangold & Faulds, 2009). The challenges for airlines would be to develop the capacity to establish the existence of the invisible communication and leverage it to their benefits. ‘Social activity’ ranked third in the list of categories taking 13.8%, while ‘Sharing travel experience’ was the fifth gaining 7.1%. ‘Community support’ was the least active category, which only received less than 0.5%. This showed that users in the community were reluctant to provide information or support each other. Interactive or non-interactive communication Of the 1875 airline-authored messages, a predominant 91.7% is interactive communication. Among them, only 1% was functional interactivity, which was achieved through the interface’s capacity of Facebook enabling a machine–people communication. Nine carriers (45%) attempted functional interactivity on Facebook by inviting users to participate in a poll, quiz, a contest or a vote. Specifically, Swiss International Air Lines, Jet Airways and Mango Airlines contributed 17.6% each; Qatar Airways and Air New Zealand accounted for 11.8% each; and Air Canada, Qantas Airways, easyJet and Kulula Airlines

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took 5.9% each. Ninety-nine per cent of the interactive communication belonged to contingent interactivity, which was realized through two-way conversations exchanged between airlines and their Facebook users. Eighteen airlines (90%), except Ryanair and Tigerair Singapore, engaged in contingent interactivity. KLM was the most engaging communicator with its Facebook users contributing 38.9% contingent interactive posts followed by Jetstar Airways (12.4%). Table 4 is a summary of interactive communication compared with non-interactive communication, with a breakdown of functional and contingent interactivity. Types of messages likely to result in functional interactivity A poll, quiz, a contest or an invitation is most likely to result in functional interactive communication. An airline’s quizzes or invitations to vote posted on Facebook are usually related to its operation, its destinations served or aviation technology. For example, Qatar Airways asked its Facebook users to make a guess of one of its destinations served. Jet Airways, instead, challenged its Facebook users with the knowledge of the black box carried by an aircraft, and Kulula Airlines invited its Facebook users to vote for its excellence in social media customer service. Table 5 gives exemplars of airline-authored functional interactive posts. All functional interactive messages were initiated by airlines. Types of messages likely to result in contingent interactivity Messages of the nature of ‘Information seeking’, ‘Compliment’, ‘Grievance’ and ‘Sharing travel experience’ are all likely to result in contingent interactivity as these types of Table 4. Summary of interactive versus non-interactive posts. Interactive Airlines KLM Swiss International Air Lines United Airlines Air Canada South Africa Airways EGYPTAIR Jet Airways Qatar Airways Qantas Airways Air New Zealand Ryanair easyJet Virgin America Southwest Airlines Kulula Airlines Mango Airlines Tigerair Singapore AirAsia Jetstar Airways Tigerair Australia Total

Functional Percentage

Non-interactive

Contingent Percentage

Percentage

0 3

0.0 17.6

663 27

38.9 1.6

9 8

5.8 5.2

0 1 0 0 3 2 1 2 0 1 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 17

0.0 5.9 0.0 0.0 17.6 11.8 5.9 11.8 0.0 5.9 0.0 0.0 5.9 17.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0

27 187 4 94 8 2 77 16 0 80 46 32 68 65 0 83 212 12 1703

1.6 11.0 0.2 5.5 0.5 0.1 4.5 0.9 0.0 4.7 2.7 1.9 4.0 3.8 0.0 4.9 12.4 0.7 100.0

2 3 4 31 10 10 7 8 0 1 8 16 2 14 3 11 3 5 155

1.3 1.9 2.6 20.0 6.5 6.5 4.5 5.2 0.0 0.6 5.2 10.3 1.3 9.0 1.9 7.1 1.9 3.2 100.0

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Table 5. Exemplars of functional interactive communication. Case 1

If you are crazy about airplanes, you should know this! What is the colour of the black box?

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Case 2

There is no time to was, we have 3 days left to gather votes for ‘Excellence in social media customer service’. We need your vote to show the world that a South African airline is up there with the best in the world.

messages either necessitate a response or arouse peer users’ curiosity, interest or empathy that invites contribution to and participation in the communication. An exemplar of contingent interactive communication was a request for a follow-up of an outstanding issue in relation to a carrier, a query, a complaint or a compliment about a carrier’s service. For instance, a passenger of Swiss International Air Lines posted a follow-up message on its Facebook page asking for updates about the misplaced luggage. The airline replied sympathetically with explicit contact details and procedures for the user to take further action. A KLM user posted a complaint in relation to the change of flight date that resulted in four follow-up message exchanges. All contingent interactive messages were initiated by users. Table 6 shows exemplars of such contingent interactive communication between airlines and their Facebook users. Non-interactive communication and types of messages likely to result in non-interactivity Around 8% of airline-authored messages were non-interactive communication. These were messages that failed to generate any responses or follow-ups from Facebook users. This type of message was predominantly airline-authored ‘Advertisements, sales and promotion announcements’, ‘Sponsorship’, ‘Real-time updates’, and ‘Social activity’ and Facebook user-authored ‘Social activity’. Almost all airlines had non-interactive communication messages, except Ryanair. Among them, EGYPTAIR took the biggest percentage (20%) of non-interactivity followed by Southwest Airlines (10.3%) (Table 4). Differences between FSCs and LCCs and their respective users Overall, FSCs were more active in generating posts than LCCs, with FSCs contributing 60% and LCCs 40%. A Chi-square test was conducted which confirmed this observation (χ2 = 13.467, df = 6, n = 172, p < .05, Cramer’s V = 0.28) (Table 7). Specifically, FSCs were more active in generating five categories of messages which included ‘Real-time updates’ (100%), ‘Miscellaneous’ (73%), ‘Social activity’ (71%), ‘Poll/contest’ (71%) and ‘Sponsorship’ (69%), while LCCs were only active in creating one category of message, that is, ‘Information provision’ (100%). Both FSCs and LCCs were interested

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Table 6. Exemplars of contingent interactive communication. Case 1

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Two days without luggage in Muscat and no body of Swiss Air doesn’t know where my luggage is. Is it normal????

Dear [user], the handling agent for SWISS lost luggage in Muscat is OMAN AIR S.A.O.C. with phone number 968 24 519 504. Have you tried to give them a call? Also you can purchase necessities, but please keep your receipts and claim via customer service http://bit.ly/o5dnrD once back home and you will be reimbursed for the essentials. I do hope your luggage is found soon. Kind regards, [airline representative] Case 2

Nice page KLM … .what about the 900€ which I’ve lost recently because I’d like to postpone my flight with one month? Why is it so impossible to change dates? Only because of rules? My seat will be sold to someone else anyway … that’s twice 900€ for KLM … …

Hello [user], we can only imagine your frustration about this issue. However, when you purchase a ticket, you agree with its terms and conditions, and so do we. By these is that we abide by and we can’t bend them, let alone break them … .

Don’t wish me all the best … please … with ONE (oke, maybe 2 … ) click of your mouse, just as much trouble as putting your reply on this page, you can change my travel date, and sell my empty seat to another customer. Your words are beautiful and well chosen, but my 900 euro’s are gone. Does KLM realise how much money this is for an average traveller with a wife and 2 year old in Brazil?

Hello [user], we’d be more than happy to double check your ticket conditions and maybe we’re able to clarify this for you. Let us know if you’d like us to contact you via private messages to have a look at your reservation and come back to you with more information.

in creating ‘Advertising, sales and promotion’ and ‘Social activity’ posts but less interested in updating information (Figure 1). This is an interesting note. In the airline industry, FSCs mainly focus on business travellers or those less price-sensitive leisure passengers and compete on service quality with extensive route networks, frequent scheduling and attentive pre-flight and onboard services. They also maintain Frequent Flyer Programs as part of the standard package to retain passenger loyalty (Klophaus, 2005). LCCs, in contrast, target price-sensitive leisure passengers and have adopted a variety of strategies to improve productivity and reduce costs by stripping off all frill services where possible. Passengers are educated to be self-reliant to book tickets, organize their seat allocation, drop bags and arrange connecting flights, where

Airline-initiated posts Categories

FSCs

Advertising, sales and promotion 39 (50%) Information provision 0 (0%) Sponsorship 9 (69%) Real-time updates 2 (100%) Social activity 34 (71%) Poll/contest 12 (71%) Miscellaneous 8 (73%) Total 104 (60%) Pearson chi-square = 13.467, p-value = .036* Cramer’s V value = 0.28, p-value = .036*

User-authored posts

LCCs

Total

39 (50%) 3 (100%) 4 (31%) 0 (0%) 14 (29%) 5 (29%) 3 (27%) 68 (40%)

78 3 13 2 48 17 11 172

Categories

FSC users

Compliment 134 (36%) Grievance 435 (51%) Sharing travel experience 122 (58%) Information seeking 540 (56%) Community support 5 (38%) Social activity 246 (59%) Miscellaneous 106 (64%) Total 1588 (53%) Pearson chi-square = 64.133, p-value = .000*** Cramer’s V value = 0.146, p-value = .000***

LCC users

Total

235 (64%) 419 (49%) 89 (42%) 423 (44%) 8 (62%) 168 (41%) 60 (36%) 1402 (47%)

369 854 211 963 13 414 166 2990

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Table 7. Chi-square test.

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necessary. Accordingly, FSCs and LCCs employ different marketing communication channels to connect with their targeted segments. For example, FSCs tend to follow their business passengers’ tastes and communicate with them via elite media such as CNN, The Economist, The Financial Times and Forbes, while LCCs rely heavily on their individual corporate websites, although popular local newspapers and radio are also utilized. LCCs are more dependent on corporate websites for their marketing and sales activity as e-commerce and a paperless office is one of the best practices adopted to reduce costs. They are more inclined to new technologies and innovation to cost deduction and productivity improvement. However, this research shows that LCCs have lagged behind FSCs in exploiting the prospective functions of social media. While establishing the rationale would be beyond the scope of this research, it certainly deserves further investigation. Two differences were established between FSC and LCC users. First, FSC users contributed more posts, accounting for 53% compared to LCC users’ 47%. This result was also ascertained by a Chi-square test (χ2 = 64.133, df = 6, n = 2990, p < .001, Cramer’s V = 0.146) (Table 7). Specifically, FSC users were more active in creating five types of messages which included ‘Miscellaneous’ (64%), ‘Social activity’ (59%), ‘Sharing travel experience’ (58%), ‘Information seeking’ (56%) and ‘Grievance’ (51%), while LCC users only outperformed FSC users in ‘Compliment’ (64%) and ‘Community support’ (62%). Second, FSC and LCC users demonstrated differences in generating content although the messages appeared to fall into their respective categories. For example, both FSC and LCC users searched for relevant information. However, FSC users were more interested in learning how to organize their trips, such as upgrading baggage allowance while LCC users were keener to find out the special deals and bargains. More than 30% of all LCC users’ queries attribute to this type of information seeking, a phenomenon worth LCCs’ close attention. It implies that LCCs need to consider how and when to communicate their sales promotions to their targeted market segments via social media and how to turn these users into prospective buyers to optimize ticket sales. This crucial intelligence would allow LCCs to establish what destinations their social media users are interested in flying to and which season of the year they want to book the flight. It would also facilitate LCCs to make informed planning of their route networks, flight scheduling and inventory management. Discussion Social media has evolved out of a static web to a dynamic and interactive application with a profound impact on both businesses and consumers. It is argued that social media has the most potential to revolutionize the way businesses operate in every aspect by bringing the customers into play. Our study has ascertained the following. First, airlines have exploited various functions of Facebook, which include: communication channel for marketing activities; distribution channel to optimize sales and service recovery mechanism to recover service failures. These findings confirm other researchers who explored how other industries such as hospitality, banking, education, retail and charities have utilized Facebook. Next, when using social media as a marketing communication channel, airlines still adopt an inside-out approach in designing and developing messages. One-way advertisement was the primary marketing message posted on social media, which is less inviting for participation. However, what is worth noting is the change of language style of advertisement and sales promotion announcements, which is short, vivid and informal. This is in contrast to what Hvass and Munar (2012) have established that airlines’ tone is

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authoritative. It can be argued that the posts were collected from different airlines in different countries and the timing of data collection varied. Nevertheless, our findings demonstrate that airlines are following the principles of managing social media presence, as suggested by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), which are active, interesting, humble, informal and honest. In addition, it is encouraging to observe that airlines have started to embrace an outsidein approach by involving customers into their marketing communication process, resulting in interactivity. They achieve this by deliberately designing and executing engaging messages such as polls, quizzes and contests in relation to their operation and industry technology to attract Facebook users to visit the page, hence stimulating more traffic to realize functional interactivity. What is more fascinating is that airlines have demonstrated their capability of managing contingent interactive communication with their Facebook users. More contingent interactive messages were recorded than functional interactive messages between airlines and their respective Facebook users, showcasing airlines’ commitment to entering into a direct conversation with their customers to foster relationships. This achievement is attributable to the convenience and efficiency of the virtual communication forum available on Facebook, whereby an instant interpersonal dialogue is enabled. It is also a reflection of the genuine efforts of airline employees, who are dealing with their Facebook users directly. The intimate, friendly and personalized messages composed by airline staff were able to promote immediacy, personal presence and empathy, which not only enhances users’ engagement with the website resulting in increased interactivity but also facilitates relationships building and development (Trammell, Williams, Postelnicu, & Landreville, 2006). Finally, airlines do not engage in the same level of interactivity on Facebook as shown by the Interactivity Performance Matrix (Figure 3). Six airlines plotted into the Leader’s quadrant, which included KLM, Jetstar Airways, Air Canada, AirAsia, Qantas Airways and easyJet. These airlines have demonstrated their capacity to engage in an interactive communication with their Facebook users, which benefits their business–customer relationship building and development. KLM outperformed the rest by not only interactively communicating with their users, but also by their users’ overwhelming enthusiasm for interacting with the carrier. KLM alone was responsible for 38.9% of interactive posts, compared with 12.4% of interactive posts from Jetstar. KLM’s Facebook users were also the largest contributors to user-generated posts, claiming almost one-fifth (19.6%) of the total. The Laggard quadrant contained another six airlines, which were Swiss International Air Lines, Tigerair Australia, Jet Airways, Qatar Airways, Tigerair Singapore and Ryanair. These airlines were less active in generating posts on their Facebook pages or in engaging their customers in the communication process. Likewise, their Facebook users did not show much interest in interacting with the airlines. Hence, both parties remained relatively dormant on Facebook. From a business perspective, an interactive communication requires constant attention from the businesses, which may be more than a smaller or a low-margin business can afford to provide. From an individual user’s perspective, a user, although having the opportunity to interact with the businesses who then makes an attempt to do so, might not necessarily get an immediate response, hence showing less satisfaction than the one who has no such opportunity at all. These businesses face both internal and external challenges. A thorough auditing is essential to ensure that they have the resources and capacity to embrace social media. They also need to determine how to engage their Facebook users to ensure that they optimize the technology opportunities to reach their customers and establish relationships.

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Figure 3. Interactivity Performance Matrix.

The User-activist quadrant collected four carriers, which included Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, South African Airways and Air New Zealand. The users were far more enthusiastic for posting on the carriers’ respective Facebook pages though they failed to have received the same level of zest from their host airlines, which resulted in an imbalance of posts. This demonstrates that consumers are increasingly gaining more control in this marketing communication process where the interactivity feature of the media becomes inherent. The inability of businesses to action and react to consumers will open the door for advert e-Word-of-Mouth and viral marketing effect on their brand and reputation. Businesses therefore need to ensure they have an effective social media strategy and are able to implement the strategy. In addition, they need to identify the influential users and make sure these users could become their ambassadors to generate positive effects. The quadrant of Business-activist gathered another four carriers which included EGYPTAIR, Kulula Airlines, Mango Airlines and Virgin America. These airlines were keen to post messages on Facebook pages but unfortunately their users did not seem to be stimulated into a conversation with the carriers. A close examination of these carrier-authored posts revealed that a big proportion were non-interactive marketing messages such as advertisements, sales promotions or sponsorship announcements, which failed to attract users’ interest to respond. Although there exists a significant correlation between the use of social media and the individual user’s personal characteristics, social-demographic backgrounds and computer skills (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010; Moore & McElroy,

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2012), it is nevertheless the capability of businesses that dictate whether they are able to induce users into a conversation on social media (Gulbrandsen & Just, 2011). This remains the most challenging task for any business.

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Theoretical contributions Our contribution to literature is threefold. First and foremost, we streamline and extend the definition and application of functional and contingent interactivity to the most dynamic online environment, for example, social media domain, whereby the interactivity feature is considered inherent. Second, marketing and communication literature recognizes the role of communication and interactivity in relationship marketing but acknowledges the challenges of achieving such interactivity in both an offline and online environment. Our study confirms that communication can become more interactive in social media environment, conducive to relationships formulation and development. Social media has the ability to facilitate both types of interactivity and enhance it to a higher level. Such technology availability lends consumers more power in this interactivity process. Last but not the least, relationship marketing literature asserts that a consumer-centric approach is essential in the marketing communication process in order to create shared meaning of marketing messages and added value resulting in relationship building and development. Our finding extends this stream of academic research by advancing the understanding of consumers’ role in this shared meaning creation process. We ascertain that consumers are instrumental in achieving interactive marketing communication and are gaining growing control over communication with the facilitation of social media. Management implications Although this research used airlines as the object of the study, our findings have the following management implications applicable to other industries. First of all, businesses need to consider what type of messages they want to create on social media and how to convey such messages. The type of messages is pivotal in fostering interactive communication. Strategically designed and developed messages have the power to arouse users’ interest, which encourages their willingness to respond, to be involved and to participate (Gulbrandsen & Just, 2011). Marketing messages such as advertisements and public relation releases that are welcomed in traditional media, such as newspapers and television, are of more an educational style and are less prone to motivate social media users to participate. In contrast, messages such as invitations to a quiz, contest and a vote are more likely to encourage social media users to be involved as they give users an opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills and express themselves. In developing interactive communication strategies, businesses need to consider how to demonstrate added value to users to participate in online interactive communication. Consumers are reluctant to accept new types of communication with businesses unless they perceive sufficient added value to compensate for the prospective cost incurred as well as for the extra effort invested in mastering and using the technologies (Vlasic & Kesic, 2007). Businesses need to define the added value and determine how it can be delivered. Should personalized communication be considered one of the added values, businesses need a plan and must leverage resources to make it perceivable and attractive. Furthermore, businesses should endeavour to identify the most influential individuals and engage them to become champions and ambassadors in leading the interactive communication activities. Those highly influential individuals tend not to be easily susceptible.

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Once identified and targeted, they should be given incentives to optimize their capacity to influence their peers and lead the community (Aral & Walker, 2012). Finally, businesses should consider what kind of social media strategies they need to have in place and plan what resources are required to implement their social media strategies. Our findings demonstrate that appropriate strategies and their effective implementation are fundamental to ensure a more satisfactory social media communication performance.

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Limitations and suggestions for future research First, a more theoretically vigorous typology of categorizing social media posts needs to be developed and validated. This would help uncover what types of messages are more likely to result in interactivity. A longitudinal study on posts collected from various social media sites is essential to validate the typology of message categorization. Second, further studies are required to establish to what extent the interactive communication on social media will facilitate the relationship building and development. Any findings will shed light on businesses in their understanding of the role of technology, their customers and their relationships with their social media users, which will in turn facilitate the formulation and implementation of corporate strategy. Third, more research is needed to uncover the reasons as to why there exists a big variance in business interactivity performance. Factors such as geographical locations, cultural issues, infrastructure, business models, stage of growth, corporate strategies and their respective segment customers’ behaviour need to be examined and analyzed. Finally, further research is necessary to establish why LCCs have lagged behind FSCs in embracing social media. LCCs have been renowned for its innovation and entrepreneurship since they took shape in the late 1970 but are less responsive to social media than FSCs. Any further investigation in this aspect will shed light. Our research has the following limitations. First, posts were collected in August 2012, which only represented a snapshot of millions of posts on social media. Second, only posts on Facebook were collected and analyzed, which have different features in enabling online communication compared with other social media such as Twitter, YouTube or Linkedin. Future research could be undertaken to include more social media sites. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviews and the editor in chief of this special issue for their constructive comments. The authors’ thanks also go to the five students in Swinburne University of Technology, who are Wesley Robertson, Bo Huang, Jiabei Liu, Ignatius J. Soegeng, and Aaron Yar Lun Wong, for undertaking the tasks of coding and categorizing the themes of posts. Their hard work and commitment is highly appreciated. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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